Sunday, 31 July 2016

Part 3 of Christianity versus the Diversity Ideology

In two previous blogs [1,2] I have been constructing a
dynamic model of the competition between Christianity and the new secular
ideology. The idea is that as Christianity declines in the West its role in
public institutions and spaces also declines, leaving a neutral vacuum now
being filled by an secular ideology hostile to Christianity, especially in its
Biblical form.

I (and others) have the named this ideology Diversity, as it often uses the language
of diversity, inclusion and tolerance to defeat Christianity in public, knowing
that these include areas contrary to Christian teaching. For example in the
recent leadership election for the UK Conservative Party two candidates,
Stephen Crabb and Andrea Leadsom, both conservative Christians, were challenged
in public for not voting in favour of same-sex marriage in the House of
Commons, with both having to backtrack in some degree on their previous
decisions in order to prove their political correctness to the Diversity
ideology [3].

Likewise the new Prime Minister, Theresa May, also mentioned
her approval of same-sex marriage in her leadership victory speech in order
that people would realise that her church-going and right-of-centre political
beliefs did not violate the Diversity code [4]. The issue was not about the
rights of LGBT people, who are perhaps secondary in this matter, but about a public
confession to humanist beliefs that compromise Christianity. It is a modern day
equivalent of sacrificing to Caesar so that the Lordship of Jesus is
undermined. In this way Christianity is removed from the public space, with
Christians deterred from high office.

The outline model introduced in the previous blog [1] is
given again in figure 1. The Church and Diversity sides of the model are almost
symmetric; Diversity is missing the direct word-of-mouth conversion reinforcing
loop as it has no regular congregations like Christianity. What I will do next
is model the population movements on the church side of figure 1, to check the
effects of secularisation do indeed work.

Secularisation

There are two sides to secularisation: institutional - the removal of Christianity from the public space,
loops Bc3 and Bd3 in figure 1; and population
- the decline in the number of people who identify as Christians. This
population effect is not in the above outline model, but in moving to a System
Dynamics (SD) simulation it needs to be introduced. Beliefs are held by people,
so people must be in the model!

I will consider three stocks to represent the church side,
loops Rc1 and Bc1, left side of figure 1. Firstly there is Church, people who participate in church through membership and/or
attendance, figure 2. Additional there are Heritage
Christians, those who identify themselves as Christian by culture but do
not participate in church. Finally there are the Neutral, those who would say they hold no religion. As I am only
dealing with a sub-model of figure 1 then Diversity
is excluded [5].

Figure 2: System Dynamics (SD) Sub-Model of Church & Society

The church can convert from both heritage Christians and the
neutral, so that loop Rc1 in figure
1, becomes Rhc and Rnc in the SD model [6]. Those who leave
the church are deemed to become heritage Christians (loop Bc1 becomes Bl) only.
Some will go on to abandon the faith, loop Bs,
but many will remain Christian in some sense for the rest of their lives.

The sum of the stocks Church
and Heritage Christians is the total
number identifying as Christian. It is the loss from these combined stocks,
loop Bs, that represents
secularisation in terms of people. It is influenced by the battle between
Christianity and Diversity in the public space, given in the converter effect of secularisation. This converter
is part of loop Rc1 in figure 1 and
will be modelled in full in a later blog.

Also in the model, but excluded from the diagram in figure 2
are births and deaths from each category. Some of the children born to heritage
Christians never identify as Christian and are effectively born neutral. This
is also part of population secularisation; the children who do not adopt the
identity of their parents. Likewise some the children of church members may
never practice becoming heritage, and some may also not identify as Christian
either.

So for now population secularisation will mean the decline of
those who identify as Christian. I will refine this definition in a later blog
when the model is presented in full.

Effects of Secularisation

The base run of the model in figure 2 is set so that church
and Christianity are rising in line with the growing population, top curves in
figures 3 and 4. The first effect that is introduced is that only 50% of those
born to church members themselves become church members [7]. This has no effect
on Christianity; it is identical to the base run (figure 4). However the effect
on church attendance is devastating, figure 3. The church is not converting
enough to make up for this child loss. This has been the story of the last 140
years for the older denominations in the UK. They always lost about half their
children, but up to the 1870s had more than enough conversions to make up the
difference. The end of revivals spelt the end of high conversions and the red
line of figure 3 is the pattern of decline [7].

Figure 3: Church Decline – Effects of Secularisation

Figure 4: Christianity – Effects of Secularisation

Now introduce constant secularisation. The effect on the church
is less pronounced, figure 3, but Christianity is now declining. Slowly of
course, the time axis is a hundred years, but secularisation, like church
decline is slow. The effects of the battles between Christianity and secularism/humanist
are introduced by letting the converter effect
of secularisation rise over time. Again there is little effect on church
numbers (figure 3), but Christianity declines even faster (figure 4), as it
does when secularisation also affects child retention. Secularisation in the
public space has little effect on church numbers but a massive effect on
Christian identity, accelerating the decline of heritage Christians. One by-product
is that a greater proportion of those who call themselves Christian practice
the faith, but that is because of a loss of identity among non-practising
Christians, not conversion to church.

Combating Church Decline

Traditionally the church is better at recruiting members
from heritage Christians than from those who do not identify as Christian, the
neutral. The temptation is to combat church decline by increasing heritage
conversion, loop Rhc, figure 2. Heritage
Christians respond well to evangelistic events and courses such as Alpha and
Christianity Explored. Increasing these conversions shows a positive short-term
effect on church growth, but it still ends up declining, figure 5. The reason
for this decline is seen in figure 6 as the church’s policy of conversions from
heritage Christians only has made little impact on secularisation. The church
is trying to solve its problems by fishing in a smaller and smaller pool!

Church decline has no long-term solution without also
attempting to combat secularisation. Thus the church should aim to have
conversions from both heritage Christians and the neutral. That is it
must attempt to evangelise the neutral group, and not just rely on reaching
those with Christian backgrounds. Figures 7 and 8 show the results of making
conversions over both categories; church growth is sustained and secularisation
is arrested. Recruitment from both categories is more successful as converts
from the neutral category have more long-term effect than those from the
heritage Christian category, because even if they or their children abandon
church they now have a Christian heritage and are thus easier to “re-convert”.

It is interesting to note that this improved reversal of
church decline is achieved by personal contact alone and without the assistance
of Christianity returning to the public space. The church may be tempted halt
secularisation by trying to win the battle with Diversity and humanism in the
public arena. However a better way is to seek converts from those who deny a
Christian identity. The church grows, the people who claim to be non-Christian
stop increasing, and thus it becomes easier for Christianity to move back into
the public space in the future.

Next Stage of Modelling

So far the model is behaving as hoped. But there is much
more to go. In particular the people
involved in Diversity need to be added to the model in figure 2. As a sneak
preview the stocks and flows are shown in figure 9. The model is symmetric
around the neutral with Diversity having both its intentional and heritage
parts, though the latter will be small at present.

Figure 9: Full Population Stocks and Flows of Christianity and Diversity in Society

When I return to this model I will compare the current
growth in Diversity with Christianity’s decline and how policies to combat
secularisation might change Diversity’s dynamics.

[5] Also excluded are other religions, such as Islam and political
ideologies. These are outside the boundary of the model. Other religions as
they are not yet large enough to have leverage in public, and political beliefs
because they can be held alongside religious or non-religious beliefs.

[6] Loops Bnc and Bhc represent the reduced effects of
conversion in populations diminishing through conversion. This is a word-of-mouth
effect, beyond the scope of this blog to discuss. See http://www.churchmodel.org.uk/Limitedmodel.htmlfor a discussion.

Here I show that for one denomination child retention is
largely unchanged over a long period covering growth and decline. In common
with other denominations it is about 50%.The blogs also show the link between decline, lack of conversions and
lack of revival.

Sunday, 10 July 2016

I write much about the growth and decline of Christian
churches, but given the political events in the UK following the EU referendum
I thought I would compare church membership with political party membership to
see who is the stronger. One result of the referendum has been a vote of no
confidence in the Labour Party leader by most of his MPs, which was followed by
a 60,000 increase in party membership in one week [1]. In church terms that
would be a massive revival! But what does it mean in political party terms?

Membership of UK Political Parties

First, let me give a sense of the size of the main parties
in the UK. Figure 1 shows changes in party membership since 2000 where such
data exists [2,3]. The membership of both the Labour and Conservative Parties
have declined through the period, though both are significantly bigger than the
other parties.

Figure 1

Since the appointment of Jeremy Corbyn as their leader, the
Labour Party has seen a significant membership rise to over 400,000, probably
due to an imminent leadership election. Thus Labour easily has the largest
membership in the UK, over 2.5 times that of the Conservatives, despite its
relative lack of success in recent elections [4]. Both the Liberal Democrats
(Lib Dem) and Green Party have seen recent rises in membership, taking them
past the 60,000 mark, well above the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP)
on 47,000. There is little correlation between party size and electoral performance,
or party size with the referendum result!

Declining Churches and Political Parties Compared

Figure 2 compares the memberships of the Church of England
and the Conservative Party since the 1940s [5]. The Conservatives had a massive
post-war recruitment campaign, but have since fallen from a peak of nearly 3
million to just 150,000 members. The Church of England by contrast has fallen
far more slowly from 3 million to just under a million [6]. Despite the well-publicised
decline of the established church, it almost looks healthy compared with the
Conservative Party! The Church of England were once nicknamed the “Conservative
Party at prayer”. I doubt if that is a true description these days. From figure
2 it looks as if the Conservative Party better start praying again!

Figure 2

A similar pattern of decline is seen by comparing the
Methodist Church with the Labour Party, figure 3. In this case the two almost
match each other, though there is no obvious reason why this should be so. Both
had just under 800,000 members in 1960, and both had about 200,000 in 2012.

Figure 3

It is immediately obvious from figures 2 and 3 that changes
in party membership are far more volatile than that of churches. There are a
number of reasons for this:

Unlike churches, most party members need to renew
membership each year, thus they are more likely to disaffiliate if there are
events that disturb them. Note the drop in Labour following its divisions and
election loss in the late 1970s, a similar drop in the Conservatives in the early
1990s for similar reasons.

Unlike churches, joining a political party does not require
any participation at regular meetings. Churches meet every week and for some
you have to make a public confession of faith before you join. That is a level
of commitment I doubt many political parties would wish to introduce [7]!

Thus political parties are much easier to join and leave and
can be done so with little commitment. Note the rapid rise of both parties from
1945-1953. The recruitment campaigns behind this increase have similar dynamics
to that of Christian revival. A research student of mine explained this rise
with a similar model to the Limited Enthusiasm Model of church growth – word of
mouth dynamics [3,8]. There is a similar revival in the Labour Party in the
late 1990s (figure 3) when Tony Blair came to power. But the general trend of
both mainstream parties is down. It is estimated that in these periods of
political revival the majority of party members were completely inactive [3].

Growing Churches and Political Parties Compared

Yes there are growing churches! As the mainline
denominations decline other denominations are growing and taking some of the
vacant space in the Christian landscape. Figure 4 compares the decline of the
Methodists with the growth of Pentecostalism, the Eastern Orthodox, and the
“New” churches. The latter are independent charismatic churches, including New
Frontiers and Vineyard, which came about as a result of the charismatic revival
that started in the 1960-70s. Their growth has slowed of late, though not
ceased, as many of these churches are in transition from the first generation
of leadership.

Figure 4

Notice both Pentecostals and the Eastern Orthodox have now
passed the Methodist Church. Both are enhanced by immigration, the Orthodox
being largely Greek. However there is strong revival growth in Pentecostalism
as well.

How does this growth compare with political parties? Figure
5 compares the sum of the revival churches, Pentecostals and “New”, with the
Labour Party, and with the sum of the Lim Dems, UKIP, Greens and the Scottish
National Party (SNP), all of whom boast of growth. The revival churches are far
larger than both political groupings; even with the recent surge in Labour
membership.

Figure 5

Just as important as the level of membership of the revival
churches is the consistency of their growth, reflecting their long-term member commitment
and regular meetings. We live in times where churches are scorned, secularism
applauded, and political parties get much media attention for their growth. But
from figure 5 it is clear that churches have a far healthier, and more sustainable,
growth pattern. I could have added to their number all the independent
evangelical churches, and all evangelical and charismatic churches in the
mainstream denominations. Evangelical revival is dwarfing political party
revival!

Membership in 2016

Indeed Christianity has far greater membership than
political parties. Figure 6 shows the state of play at this point in time in
2016. Of course church attendance is lower than membership, but political party
activism is also much lower than their membership [3]. Thus membership
comparison between the two types of organisations is a fair measure of their relative
strength.

Figure 6

Despite its decline the established Church of England is by
far the largest grouping, figure 6. By contrast the Conservatives, the party of
government, are dwarfed by Pentecostals and the Eastern Orthodox. Lib Dems,
Green and UKIP look tiny by comparison. Though note the SNP is significantly
larger than other “small” parties despite drawing from the smaller base of
Scotland. Proportionally the SNP is the most successful UK political party in
membership terms at present.

The largest political party is the Labour Party, figure 6,
and it may well be even bigger by the time I post this blog as people are
joining so fast! Nevertheless it is still only the same size as each of the
Pentecostal and Eastern Orthodox churches. It is possible that once Labour has had
its membership election it will decline again, perhaps forming two parties, due
to disputes about leadership and direction.

The British National Party (BNP), estimated at 4,200, cannot
be seen on this scale, figure 6. Even the Momentum group, currently influencing
the Labour Party, barely registers, even though it doubled from 6,000 to 12,000
recently [1]. There is little correlation between party size and media
coverage. If only churches could get the same positive media attention as
Momentum and UKIP do! Well Jesus never went down well with the powers that be,
so we Christians can’t really expect positive press!

Even when it comes to change over time churches fare better
than political parties, Figure 7 shows the Anglican Church falling less than
the Conservatives over the last 60 years, as already noted [9]. However the
figure also shows the dramatic drop in participation of all organisations over
this period.

Figure 7

Why such a drop of involvement in voluntary organisations?
There are probably many reasons; rising wealth is one. Most people now have
both the money, and the time, to spend it on pleasure pursuits. That is an external
reason. Another may be organisational atrophy, an internal reason. Older
churches and mainstream political parties have become institutionalised. That
is, they have large bureaucracies to maintain, and they occupy prominent
positions in society. Such organisations lose the ability, and perhaps the will,
to recruit to their cause. I have been modelling this with system dynamics,
showing that most organisations have a lifecycle and find it very hard to
survive without a serious dismantling of their institutional structures [10].

Figure 8

Perhaps what we are seeing is the demise of the older
political parties and churches, and the rise of new ones to replace them. Figure
8 compares the growth of the newer parties with churches, showing that it is
the Christian Church that is making a better job of this growth than its
political counterparts. Rather than secularism taking hold, it looks as if
Christianity is having a revival.

Ideological Battle

Of course organisational membership is not the whole story.
As I have previously written Christianity is losing out in the public space to
a new ideology, which I named Diversity [11]. It is humanist in belief and makes
use of various single-issue movements, especially the diversity/inclusion/equality
one, to pursue its cause. It has no party as such, but all political parties
acknowledge it and promote it to some degree, as do some of the older church
denominations. It is this battle where secularism is winning out over
Christianity, driving churches to the margins of society, even though those
churches are numerically healthier than political parties.

So although Christianity can take some comfort that is
having more success than political parties, with some churches having a measure
of revival, it comes at a cost – public hostility. Not from all the public, not
even from most of it, but the hostility of activists and their various elites
in government, media, campaign groups and employment. However we can take
comfort as Biblically we know true revival is given so we can face persecution,
and through it, win many to Christ.

[4] Figures for Labour Party membership are for full
members. In addition Labour has affiliated members from Trade Unions, and
registered supporters who may vote in leadership elections, but not in branch
meetings.

[5] Membership figures for the Conservatives are limited,
partly due to its organisational structure. Like most parties they are
reluctant to release membership figures when they do not tell a good story.

Statistics For Mission. Various volumes from 2007-2014,
Research and Statistics Department Archbishops' Council.

Statistics for Mission.
Various volumes. The Methodist Church.

[7] Churches are primarily about worship – thus are God-centred
and have a sense of eternal destiny. Political parties are about events of this
world and changing things in the near future. Those differences could make
changes in party membership more volatile than that of churches.

[8] The Limited Enthusiasm model of church growth is
explained in a number of publications, e.g.

A General Model of Church Growth
and Decline. Hayward J. Journal of Mathematical Sociology,
29(3), 177-207, (2005).

Saturday, 2 July 2016

After all the blogs on church decline I felt I needed to
write on something more positive. Not that I am negative about the future of
the Christian church. The Lord Jesus promised that his gospel would cover the
earth before his return, and he said the gates of hell would not stop him
building his church. So atheism, humanism, and the like, have no chance
ultimately, whatever passing problems they cause the church at present.

The way Jesus builds his church is by pouring out his
Spirit, often called revival. I live in Wales, a place that has had many
revivals in the past. I am sure we would have them again if churches took the
concept seriously, but sadly they don't.

One reason revivals may not be high on the agenda is that
people don't believe they are real. They read the stories, perhaps getting
excited by them for a short while, but rarely look at the hard numerical evidence
to validate their effect. They remain just stories. I have recently shown how
one Welsh denomination grew faster than the population for 130 years, through
revival and conversion [1]. I will soon show the same for the Wesleyan
Methodists [2]. In each case decline set in when revival ceased. But I wonder
if the national scale of these revivals is too big and impersonal to bring them
to life.

To help make revival more personal I will look at some congregational
membership figures from the Rhondda Valleys around the time of the 1904/5
revival. I will focus on the Ystradyfodwg area, which includes the communities
of Pentre, Ton Pentre, Gelli and Ystrad. The best membership data is for the three
main Welsh non-conformist denominations at the time: the Calvinist Methodists,
the Congregational and Baptist [3,4].

The three denominations had 18 congregations between them.
This may seem a large number, but the area was very densely populated. Before
the days of widespread public transport people expected to walk to church, and to
one in the language of their choice, Welsh or English. Hence some duplication.
Although there were a variety of denominations, providing a level of
competition, the evidence from history books, newspapers, and the memories of
older people was that the churches cooperated and were friendly to each other.
Nothing like the stereotyped image of division and protectionism that is often
portrayed in the popular media.

Calvinist Methodist

The Calvinist Methodists, also called the Presbyterian
Church of Wales, had five congregations in the area [4], table 1. Four were Welsh speaking with the one
English-speaking church started between 1891 and 1901. Between these dates the
five churches grew by 2.1% per annum, largely thanks to the new church in
Gelli. Compare this with the period covering the 1904/5 revival and the same
churches grew by an average 6.6% per annum. This shows the massive effect of
the revival on membership, and is in line with the national denomination’s
growth during the revival [1].

Table 1

The church with the largest increase was Duffryn in Ystrad,
with a 9.5% annual increase. However all the churches saw significant
membership growth due to the revival, the lowest being 4.7%. This compares with
a typical annual increase of 0.3% before the revival. Revival is real – there
were many converts.

The congregation with the largest numerical increase was
Jerusalem in Ton Pentre with 139 added. It is worth noting that by 1911 there
was little change in numbers. Membership in the Calvinist Methodists was still quite
strict at this stage, and new members had discipleship classes. It took the
First World War and the industrial decline of the twenties and thirties to undo
the effects of the revival. Despite this decline the sum of the five
congregations were still only at 1891 levels by 1937, a testament to genuine
conversion.

Congregational

The Congregational church, also known as Welsh Independents,
or Annibynwyr, had four Welsh-speaking congregations [4], table 2. Additionally
there were two English congregations, one started in 1891. Sadly there is no
data for 1891, but the six churches grew by an average annual 6% over the
revival period. Only one congregation took a hit and declined. Perhaps they
lost people to the new church in Ton Pentre that went from nothing to 246
during the revival period, the largest numerical increase of them all.

Table 2

Although Bryn Seion in Gelli had the largest percentage
increase, they were unable to retain their numbers by 1911. One of the effects
of the revival was the emergence of new churches; largely mission halls and
Pentecostals. Often new converts who had “caught” the revival found the established
churches hard to belong to. The worship lacked emotional expression. Such
enthusiasts found a better home in the newer churches where worship allowed
more freedom.

Baptists

The Baptists had seven churches in the area, three in
English [4], table 3. There were two Baptist denominations, largely reflecting
the language split. The data clearly indicate the biggest effect of the revival
is with the Baptists, with the annual rate of 0.2% rising to 11% per annum over
the revival period. One small church, Hope in Gelli, added 184 people, a 38%
annual increase. I suspect that raised some interesting pastoral care issues, which
perhaps accounts for some falling away afterwards. But again it shows the massive
numerical impact of the revival.

Table 3

Personal Interest

One church here is of personal interest. The pastor of
Hebron Baptist in Ton Pentre was my wife’s great grandfather, the Rev EW Davies,
figure 1. Her grandfather, Griffith, was in the Sunday School at the time and
also went on to be a Baptist minister himself.

Figure 1:Rev EW Davies (my wife’s great grandfather) pastor of Hebron Baptist, Ton Pentre. Her grandfather is the small boy top left. The photo is in the year the revival started, with a small selection of the 200 strong Sunday School.

Stories have been passed down in the family of services that
EW Davies took in the mines during the revival; making converts at the
coalface. There are also stories of members and deacons who had been bad boys
in the village until EW Davies had persuaded them to follow Christ and join the
church. These are people who kept the faith and worked in church to the end of
their lives. They were ever grateful to him for being bold enough to confront
them in their former lives. But that is what revival does; it gives Christians boldness.

Decline

I could show a similar pattern across all the regions of the
Rhondda Valleys. One church I preach in, Noddfa Baptist in Blaenclydach had 304
in membership in 1901, with the revival adding another 160. These days, in a
different building, numbers are more like 10 to 15, yet still a lively church.

Noddfa is one of the survivors. Look at the last column of
each of tables 1-3 and you can see that of the 18 churches in the Ystradyfodwg
area of the Rhondda only 3 are still open in 2016. The Calvinist Methodists,
the drivers of the revival, are wiped out completely. A small number of other
churches have opened since that time, I can think of two in this region. But in
the hundred or so years since the revival Christianity has been decimated here,
and across Wales. Why?

The 1904/5 revival was the last one to occur in Wales.
Indeed as I have shown elsewhere, it was a revival out of time [1]. The long
period of revivals really ended in the 1860s and the churches had been losing
ground since the 1870s. The absence of revival has been the cause. That is the
absence of the widespread outpouring of the Spirit. This led to reduced
conversions, giving a slow decline through death and demographics, the two
forces revival had made the church robust against. But the church got too
clever, preferring the things of this world to the eternal hope that God gives,
and worldly churches have insufficient recruiting power to build a church [5].

The one comfort we can take is that God has not gone away;
neither has his desire to pour out his Spirit. The revival period that started
in Wales in the 1700s did so from a much lower base than we are in at present.
If his people humble themselves, pray, seek his face, and turn from their
wicked ways then, in his time, he will bring revival [6]. And as I have shown,
revival is real, people will be converted, churches will be built up, and the
valleys will again sing the praises of Jesus Christ.

[2] Forthcoming blog on the rise and fall of the GB
Methodists using the institutional model of church growth.

[3] The Wesleyan Methodists only have data for one year, and
the Anglicans provided no breakdown of data for different congregations. Thus
they are excluded.

[4] Kidger, Margaret E, (2012). Colliers and Christianity: Religion in the coalmining communities of
South Wales and the East Midlands c1860 to 1930s with a particular focus on the
Rhondda Valleys in South Wales and the Hucknall and Shirebrook areas in
Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. PhD Thesis, University of Nottingham.

[5] This is discussed using the traits of leniency and
weakness of liberal churches in:

Kelly, Dean.
(1986). Why Conservative Churches are
Growing: A Study in the Sociology of Religion. Mercer University Press.